As I Lay Me Down to Sleep
by kiaronna
Summary: How can Eliwood tell his son he murdered his mother when she stands there before him?  When she herself, laughing and absorbed in death, cannot understand?  "Aren't you dead too, to be here with me?"  I don't own FE.


He always imagined her second death would be much different from her first. They would both lay in wearied bodies upon a sheet, their strong son looking upon them, and they would fall asleep together. Never to wake.

Blood had a tendency to linger and spread, to burst unforeseen from beneath a layer of security. He had not wanted to see it upon her again.

"Daddy." Their four year old son blinks up at him with curious blue eyes. "Momma hasn't come down to breakfast?"

"Momma isn't feeling well this morning, Roy."

A steaming plate of meat and bread is set before the heir to Pherae. A distraction. He does not take the bait. His dragon heart does not need Eliwood's human food. Roy is the very image of his father, but there is something ancient that pounds through his veins. An inhuman knowledge that, even at a young age, sets him apart. He will be great someday.

"I want to see her."

"She needs rest, Roy."

Roy picks up a fork and flings it through the air. A young serving girl, trembling, rushes through and scoops the silver into her hands.

"She's not sleeping!"

He squirms in his wooden chair, till his short legs and tiny feet patter clumsily upon the cold stone floor. He almost evades Marcus, but the older man is far too experienced.

"My young lord," he admonishes, "Your mother is sick. This is no time to throw a tantrum."

Roy is sent to classes, and Eliwood is left with the knight.

"He managed to get past his caretaker earlier this morning." Eliwood rubs his hands together to stave off the cold.

"Do you think he heard?"

Eliwood can still hear it ringing in his ears now. The shattering of plates and the wails that escalated to screams.

After the fine tea set from their wedding was broken, she had taken a liking to the breakfast dishes brought to them in bed each morning.

"No."

Marcus sighs.

"He knew she was awake."

There was a thoughtful silence.

"She's always awake."

Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night with the moon spilling unimpeded onto his sheets, with snow coating the plush red carpet of their room, his bed beside him devoid of any warmth. A single silhouette on the windowsill, a sculpture white as the swirling mist, perched across the wonderland of snow and ice. A lone figure nearly falling into a blazing white gate to the outside, to snow. Two eyes that looked only out, that saw beauty in the storm outside but never looked to him, not anymore.

_"Close the window, won't you, darling?"_

The breakfast on the table is gone, with the last clink of dishware being swept away by silent attendants.

"Roy has to know sometime, Eliwood. This isn't healthy for anyone."

The first maid that stumbled from their room with a trickle of blood running down her forehead, the first nanny who had run from him in fear. The first denial he had to make of the truth, which always led to more.

"Sometimes she's better in the evenings. Perhaps tonight I'll take Roy to see her."

Marcus lets him go.

Eliwood has said the same thing for the past year.

He shouldn't be surprised when Roy goes missing from one of his classes.

No, Eliwood isn't surprised at all. His worn boots carry him exactly where he needs to go.

The door is open when he arrives. The door is never open.

Ninian looks calm, with her lithe and pale body curved around Roy, her beneath white layers of sheets and he perched happily atop the clouds. A single candle on her nightstand is the only resistance to the snow that envelops the room, its lone flame swaying feebly.

She is singing him a nursery rhyme from the dragons, soft and haunting against the insistent wind.

The nurse stands stonily in the corner and she observes. She has already done her duty and told her lord all that he needed to know.

Her red eyes come to lock on him.

They used to remind him of rubies when she danced, flickering and sparkling, with a depth that could take what his eyes saw and flash it back at him, knock his heart into a frenzy. Now, they flicker dully in the light of the candle flame, yellow and gold.

"Eliwood."

She isn't happy to see him anymore.

"Look, Roy," she croons. "Look who's come to see me. We're all together."

Is that why her eyes can't dance?

"Daddy," Roy says uncertainly. "Daddy's come."

"Ninian." Eliwood takes a step and her form curls tighter around his son. "What did you tell him, Ninian?"

She stares blankly, mercilessly.

Two pools of blood set inside the curve of her pale face. One for each of her deaths.

"He had to know. It was only fair."

Eliwood feels a moan building in his throat.

"Roy. Come here." The attendant flees slowly, and shuts the door behind her. They are locked inside this cycle.

Roy scoots towards the edge of the bed, and Ninian watches him go with a curious coldness.

The window is open again. A flake blows onto her skin and Eliwood waits for it to melt.

"Daddy," Roy asks, "What does it mean for somebody to... die?"

Eliwood crouches down and looks his son in the eye.

"It means they fall asleep and never, ever wake up."

The window panes rattle as a gust blows through them all. Ninian's sheets remain in their place, eerily frozen along with her, and the candle on her bedside falls and cannot revive, smoky spirits rising to the heavens in its place. Her soft blue hair collapses and folds into her with a tilt of her head.

He should have known that would make her snap.

She shudders, and breathes only in. Her breath out doesn't drift from her, not like Roy's tiny puffs of white life.

"That's not true." Her voice rises on the last word and Eliwood pulls Roy into his chest. "That's not _true_."

Her pale white hand reaches to the nightstand, and suddenly her glass full of water is shattered on the door behind him. Drops have spattered through his clothes and it only makes every breeze colder.

"Ninian," he begs. "Roy is here. Roy is here."

She only has eyes for him.

"Tell him what death is again." Her voice is low and sweet, but her next words shake the room, shake Elibe itself. "Tell him you killed me, Eliwood!"

He can't reach the door without stepping on the shards. He should have made Roy leave. He should have done many things.

"Momma," Roy's voice comes muffled from his chest. "You're awake, Momma. You're here. I don't understand, Momma."

She falls, shivering, to her pillows.

_"Ninian, close the window, darling. You'll freeze to death"_

She is silent.

_"I'm already dead, Eliwood"_

"You didn't kill her, Daddy, did you?"

He couldn't-

The lie falls from his lips and is visible in the chilly air.

"She's right here, Roy. I didn't kill her."

He couldn't-

He owes her at least-

But he did.

_"Aren't you dead too, to be here with me?"_

He steps through the shards, carrying Roy with him, away from their entire life.

She lies, hands folded over her chest, in her white pillows, and the blood in her eyes is scarred over by pale lids.

He cannot leave her there alone. It only worsens when she's alone, when there's no life in her room.

_"No, Ninian. We're alive here together"_

Against his chest his son begins to cry quietly, wordlessly. Eliwood cannot care for the dead anymore, not with his son curled against him, pulsing with life and warmth.

_"Am I not just another morph, another false human form? Brought back from the dead, devoid of humanity? I used to be so much, Eliwood"_

"Goodbye."

A gust billows their bedcurtains above her, to mingle in doomed flight with the snowflakes, but he knows her eyes do not open until the door is pulled shut by the invisible wind.

_"You are a dragon and a woman, Ninian. I love you, and we'll never be separated again."_

The snowflake melts and slips down her pale cheek.

_A slipper disappears from her foot and to the ground far below_

Roy is quiet against him, just long enough to hear a gentle creaking of the windowpanes. They have borne her glazed stare for a long time, but now their frozen wood carries more, creaks in her hands.

_"I will never be separated from **him**. How are we any different, Eliwood, how am I any less wrong? I have breached the boundaries of our worlds, of life and death, brought only more suffering to all because of my weakness and desires. I was brought back only to kill, Eliwood, just like a thousand faceless others, and just as you have slaughtered them you-"_

If he opens the door to the room of Death, will still she lie there?

_"You were brought back for love," he whispers desperately, "You were brought back for me, for Roy"_

Eliwood knows better than to look, knows the answer. He knows this as well as he knew his wife.

_She is gone again, eyes bright and shining and maniacal as the moon. Her breathless, singing voice is not meant for his human ears. "I could fly then. I could fly to the edge of the world and back in my previous life, in death. It was beautiful"_

"She says it hurt, Daddy," Roy whimpers from below his chin. "Momma says she hates you. Don't put Momma to sleep, Daddy, don't let her sleep."

"Hush, Roy." He rocks against the door and the wood is cold against his palm. His tears are wet on his pale cheeks.

_"Fly with me, Ninian," he pleads, for he wants her back, needs her back_

Roy grips his tunic. "I love her." His small fists beat against Eliwood's chest, a wrenching effort to make his father care, to make him see what is true. "I want us to be together for forever!"

The wood of the sill groans and cracks a final time. Eliwood can see it behind the door, feel that it holds solely a glowing glimpse of the outside now, a portal to a world of white. Cold. Dead. Empty and without her.

"There are places Momma must go that we can't follow, Roy."

_She laughed then, her hair trembling with the rest of her in the breeze._

"Then don't let her leave," Roy cries quietly, "Don't let Momma go."

Blood has stained the white for one last time, and so began the eternal slumber. Yet she is the same, lying frozen in her sheets of white, the snow falling atop her, eyes locked upon the sky as the pools dilate and spill.

_Because she could not fly, not anymore._

"Sometimes, Roy," Eliwood whispers as he clutches his son tighter to his chest, "No matter how much you love someone, you should let them go."

_All she could do was fall_

* * *

><p><em>AN: First off, a big thank you to Fire Emblem MewMew, who was my wonderful beta-reader and helped me to slush through the snowy mess of my own piece to make better sense to the more sane people! And thank you, dear reader, very much for reading this. I adore reviews and just readers in general. That means you! Writing and recieving criticism is my one shining beacon of awesome that helps me do my homework. Okay, it also procrastinates the completion of said homework, but I would have died by now of sadness if I couldn't write. Thank you very much for reading this piece, and I hope you have a wonderful day!_

_Now on to my wacko explanation of my brain! Though I adore Ninian and Eliwood to pieces, there has always been something very disturbing and painful to me about her murder by Eliwood's hand. Death is a psychological boundary and a completely different experience than any betrayal a lover could do to a person, and Eliwood killed the woman he loved... Only to have her return to happily marry him. There is no way I can believe either of them would ever manage to overcome it, or be able to explain it to anyone else, especially their son. Two other major plot bunnies were the idea of Ninian's "illness" that caused her death being a different sort of illness entirely, as well as an odd concept of Ninian and Nergal becoming strangely alike. There we the players were, fighting to get rid of this man because he wanted to bring dragons to the world, a man who had lived for hundreds of years, a man who brought the dead back to life but changed them entirely. In a smash ending, we realize that our own side has done all of this as well, albeit for different reasons. Ninian came back to Elibe, was ancient and the daughter of Nergal, and a girl brought back from the dead primarily to help murder Nergal and two of her own people. This disturbing twist of irony made me decide to shove all three of my bunnies in one hat and then pull out this oneshot! It magic! Yaaay. For now, bye, and feel free to PM me to talk any time! I really appreciate all readers and random passerby._


End file.
